Rebirth13 min read
The Moonmark and the Mirror Lord
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I remember being a creature of sky and light long before the underworld smelled of iron and old grief. I remember a crown of dawn-feathers, a voice that made clouds stop, and a home the world called Purple-High Palace. Then, in a single blink, I woke on black earth.
"I am Iliana," I said at the gates of the dark court, and they laughed.
"She calls herself Iliana Dumas," the Underlord announced later, his voice like water on stone. "A pretty name for a pretty liar."
"Name me what you like." I was still human-shaped then, pale and small and furious. "I will not be called a beast."
"You were a bird," the Underlord said. "You ate souls." His eyes flicked up to the moon, and his smile sharpened. "Three months in my halls. Eat your penance, or break your chains and I will burn your bones."
I should have roared and vanished in a storm. Instead I bowed, because hiding is a craft I learned early.
"Go to Mirror Hall," he ordered the attendants. "Let the mirror-keeper decide what to do."
"Mirror Hall," the attendants said like a warning. The name rustled old fear in me. Mirror Hall hosted more than mirrors — it held memory and verdict. It was run by Reid Dawson, a ghost-lord with a calm face and a salt-soft voice. He was the kind of man who could cause a room to forget laughter and still keep it warm.
"I have ruined three hundred souls," I told one of the small attendants as we walked. "I will be bound in chains. I will be beaten."
"You talk too much," he muttered, but his breath smelled of coal and a faint herb. He had no pity to spare, but he walked me there anyway.
Reid stood in the pool room, his coat dim as moon-slate, a veil half covering his face like a thin promise. When he saw me he set his teacup down with a small clatter.
"So this is the famed Iliana Dumas," he said.
"I tasted better words than this in other rooms," I shot back.
He laughed, a low, private sound. "Do you beg mercy?"
"I don't beg," I said. "I bargain."
"Why?" Reid's voice became a thread that bent the room.
"Because," I said plainly, "if I am cast out, I go where there is only cold earth and fewer stars. I have a name above me that I will not forget. Help me remove the curse and I will owe you nothing. Or I will owe you everything."
Reid cocked his head. "And if I refuse?"
"Then I will bite the moon."
He paused like a man who had not expected appetite to be so stubborn. "I will keep you here," he said finally. "You will live in my quarter. You will bind yourself with a silk curtain. You will not touch my bed."
"Why not?" I asked, already feeling how the underworld's cold had seeped into my bones.
"Because you will not ruin the bed of others," Reid said. He did not laugh. "Because you will not be an excuse to cause war."
I learned quickly that with him, bargains had teeth. I agreed.
"Be careful," said the little attendant before I went in. "Reid is cunning. He smiles at knives."
"Then we will sing together," I promised.
At Mirror Hall I met Elroy Oliver, Reid's quiet servant. He had the look of someone born three times too late to a harvest that never came; his voice was small as if it had been kept under a hat for fear of rain.
"Stay by him," I told Elroy on the first night. "Don't let him sleep on his own."
"He is not the sort who needs guarding," Elroy said.
"Then guard him because I told you to."
He blinked, and I liked him for obeying even the foolish commands.
Days folded into one another like paper cranes: I huffed and fumed, Reid watched with a mild and wounding patience, Elroy fussed and fixed things, and Princess Isabel Zimmermann — pale and slow like sugar dissolved — came like a warm weather.
"Reid," Isabel whispered once when we shared a meal, "why do you shelter her?"
"Because the underworld is a net and sometimes nets collect birds," Reid said.
"Does she frighten you?"
Reid's mouth twisted. "She frightens me like thunder frightens a cliff. It is brave and obscene and beautiful."
I heard it, and my chest turned. I ate quietly.
"She is a strange jewel," Isabel said later to me, not knowing we had heard. "She will bring storms to our doors."
"Then we will learn to weather the storms," I told Isabel. "Or dance in them."
"We will," she said, and her smile was a promise better than a bargain.
We were an odd household. Reid was all careful manners and plans; I was a coal-smoldering bird; Elroy tended wounds, and Isabel hummed about banquets and hairpins. We made a life that fit within the small, moonlit rooms of Mirror Hall.
One night Reid offered me a cup of a bitter brew.
"What is this?" I asked, because nothing in the underworld tasted like sky.
"Man-made mercy," Reid said. "Drink. You will sleep."
I was wary. "And if I do not?"
"Then you'll scream," he said gently.
I drank because sleep is a small favor. That sleep pulled me into a dream — not the quick flicker of my jailbird nights but a thick story, a white corridor lined with silvered blinds. A man stood within the corridor, arm bare and moon-marked, and he touched my wrist and slid a thin gold circlet over my hand. His voice was a bell.
"You cannot be caged entirely, Iliana," he said. "If anyone makes a hole in the world, I will mend it with my hands."
I woke with the moon's echo in my ears, and the memory was sharp as a blade.
"Who is he?" I asked Reid the first morning.
He did not look surprised. "Doyle Kuznetsov," he said. "He is a prince of the heavens and a ruinous kindness."
"Doyle?" I tested the name. It fit like a glove. "I dreamed he gave me a circlet."
"Then remember it," Reid said. "Memory is a kind of armor."
We went to the Void Realm because the underlord — Hugh Belov, the water-king with a face like a submerged stone — had asked Reid to deliver a gem to a certain prince. He gave Reid a small jade orb and a smile that split the moon.
"Deliver this to the prince," Hugh whispered once, leaning close like a tide. "And do not fail."
"Why me?" Reid asked.
"Because you are worth failing," Hugh said.
I decided not to go at first. There was no point in risking my fragile bargain. But dreams clung to me like damp feathers. Doyle's hand in my dream, the circlet, a promise with strings — something about the world wanted untangling. I agreed to go only because I wanted to see the place where my dreams came from.
Reid took me through the phantom gate — a small green bead he wore on a chain — and we entered the Void Realm, or as the legends called it, the Fraying. The Fraying smelled of old paper and impossible rain.
"We are only passing," Reid warned. "Do not touch anything that looks like belonging."
"Belonging is the only crime I enjoy," I replied.
We met Lorenzo Heinrich there, the prince who had once been betrothed to the sky's loud heir, Lorenzo's laugh sounded like broken bells, and his eyes were the color of cold honey. He was arrogant and tired both—two things that suit long-lived men.
"You are Iliana," he said when he saw me. "You smell of the underworld's best fruit."
"You smell like a palace made of mirrors," I returned.
Lorenzo's face flickered. "Do you still love that storm?" he asked me with a trivial cruelty. "Or is your heart a debt?"
"My heart has always been a debt," I said. "But I can choose whom to owe."
The questions spun outward: who cursed me? Why had I lost part of my power? My dreams suggested a man in white, holding a lute and a leather map. Doyle Kuznetsov's face moved through my memory at edges: he was a touch of winter on a child's cheek.
"I will go," Reid said suddenly. "I will find how the curse was laid."
"Find what?" I pushed. "Who did this?"
"Whoever binds birds with forbidden laws binds himself also," Reid said. "I will not let the underlord use me as a post."
We acted like thieves: we took stray spirits in the Fraying and Reid learned a new trick, the heist of taking a godlight from an unguarded body. We gathered—little by little—a thread of truth: the curse had an origin in a white court, and the white court's name was Doyle Kuznetsov — not cruel, but a man who loved in his own hard way. The third prince, Doyle, had wrapped a knot around my spirit to keep me from storming the heavens.
"Why would he curse you?" I demanded in a small forest of glass.
"To hide you from other men," Reid said without mercy. "Or to save you from them. Love's brutality is not new."
I hated that answer and loved it both.
We came back to Mirror Hall with a plan to confront the truth: face Doyle where he hid truths, and force the words from him like water. But before any of that, the underlord moved.
"Reid," said Hugh Belov across the court, when Isabel had invited him to Mirror Hall in a rare fold of social duty. "You are to be honored for your service."
The court assembled: rows of thin, silent faces, and many small attendants whose eyes were like driftwood. I felt a tremor: the underlord's summons sweeps like tide. There was a ceremony and a stage and an exposed gaze.
"Reid Dawson has bound a thing to his hands," Hugh intoned. "He has brought a prize that belongs to Heaven. He is brave. He is rewarded."
"Rewarded with what?" Isabel asked, both naive and furious.
"Hundred new duties," Hugh said, smiling in a new, venomous way. "Also — to cement the empire — he shall wed the princess."
"Is that the jest?" Reid said, in a voice that pricked like a needle.
"It is not a jest, Lord of Mirrors," Hugh replied sweetly. "It is an arrangement."
I saw Isabel's mouth fail. I felt the small flush of ruin. The air closed like a fist. Hugh had put a hand on the fragile architecture of our household.
"You promised me rest," I hissed into Reid's ear. "You promised me no new nets."
"I will not be your net," he said. "I will—"
"Silence!" Hugh's smile spread like a darker moon. He raised the jade orb. "And now — a display."
He shouted for a witness table and called for proofs. A dozen attendants shuffled forward: a child showed a ribbon, a ghost showed a tattered sleeve, and then, with a flourish, Hugh stripped back a curtain and presented a small, carved figure — the circlet's twin carved from bone.
"It is mine," he declared. "This object proves the crime. Reid accepted it. Reid bound the prince's pledge. Reid is guilty of consorting with heaven."
"False!" I shouted. "It is not his hand!"
Reid's face went very small. "Hugh," he said, quiet as a knife. "This is false."
"Then prove me false," Hugh said. "Prove it in public."
The court took a breath like a bell. I saw Isabel try to rise. Reed took a step forward and then stopped because he knew the rules of the underworld: accusations had the weight of stones; the accused could not escape the scripts that the dead liked to read out loud.
"You have a witness," Hugh sneered.
"Bring her," I said.
Hugh reddened like incense. He chose the next person himself: a low attendant with a wax face who had followed Hugh's orders like a dog. He brought her forward; she spat in Reid's direction and said, "I saw him take the lord's favor."
"Enough." Reid said, and his voice was small but steady. "I did nothing but deliver what the underlord asked me to deliver. I cut a path. I set a mirror. I did not trade in crowns."
Hugh laughed, but there was a glint of fear like a fish. "Who will believe a mirror-lord over an emperor?"
"Everyone," I said.
It was a small, vain, human thing, but my voice held the small hunger I had for truth.
The trial started, and I walked forward. I would not be silent while Reid took a blade for me.
"Hugh," I said aloud. "You sent the orb. You sent the lie."
"Bird," he purred. "You talk like a moon. Who will believe your words?"
"All who have lungs," I said. "Bring me the mirror."
The tribunal laughed because a bird that talks of mirrors seems like a child's story. But one by one, I asked to see the witnesses again. I asked to see their hands. I saw the wax-faced attendant linger on Hugh's coin. I saw the shape of the lie.
"Stop!" I called, and this time, I had a plan as sharp as frost. I stepped to the table and took the small carved figure into my hands. I blew on it and sang, and heat rose like a new dawn from my skin because when I sang, my small remaining power glowed.
The incense smoked. The mirror stretched. The carved thing made a sound and then — a whisper — the truth curled out of it like steam. It was Hugh's voice, captured in the bone.
"You made this?" I asked the orb, and it murmured Hugh's taunt in a thin voice.
"Reid took it from me," it said, Hugh's voice carved.
Hugh's eyes went wide as someone who wakes mid-dream. He laughed like a man tearing at his own shirt.
"No," he whispered. "This is a trick."
"Where did you get it?" I pushed. "Who else put this here? Speak truth now and be done with it."
Hugh's hands shook. Around us, the crowd leaned in like flowering vines. "I — I claimed it," he screamed, and then the first step cracked. "I asked for it back! He refused!"
The court exploded. Isabel stood, hand over mouth, while the other attendants began to murmur. The wax-faced attendant faltered and then sobbed, "I was told to lie. I was told he would pay. I—"
"Pay?" I looked at Hugh. He had the face of someone realizing the shape of his own trap. "You told them to lie. You planted the carved thing. You meant to bind Reid and to create a debt."
Hugh's face became an animal that had been seen in daylight. He was losing shape. "No," he said. "No, you don't understand. I meant to keep my people safe. I meant—"
"You meant to force your will." Reid's voice was clean. "You meant to buy marriage and obedience with false proof."
Hugh's mouth formed the sound of denial and the sound of priests and of tides. Then, as the court pressed in, his bravado came wet and jagged. "I gave them orders because — because —"
"Because you feared being small," Isabel said, and the crowd fell quiet because the princess had just sharpened the sword.
Hugh's face began to change in the way faces do when pride is taken off like a stained coat. The attendants who had once smiled at his shadow started to step away.
"You will answer in public," I said, and this time I felt what it was to be a voice of accusation. "You will say what you did, here, in front of the whole court. And then you will stand in the square where the dead are watched and accept the shame."
Hugh's venom curdled into whimper.
"You cannot—" he began, and then the court's head judge, an old thing with coal eyes, intoned, "So be it."
Hugh was made to speak. He stood on the central dais with his hands bound in silver cords that glowed in the low light. The court was packed: dead faces leaned forward, the ghost officials had their tablets ready, and far above, the pale moon looked as if it had come to see what its water-kin had done.
"Hugh Belov," the judge said. "Confess."
Hugh's voice cracked like thin ice. "I—I ordered the planting of false proof. I paid attendants to say what I wanted them to say. I feared that Reid's growing favor with the princess would endanger my plans."
"Who are your plans for?" I asked.
Hugh's eyes flicked to the crowd, then landed on a pale face wearing a crown that might have been made of old tides — a face that, for a split second, looked like the one in my dream.
"My plan," he said at last, "was to bind power to the court. To make sure the lines of the dead and the living worked for me. Reid's growing influence threatened the old shape. I made the lie to turn the court against him."
"And did you expect none would see?" I asked.
Hugh's face lost its color like a page being washed. Around him, the crowd began to hiss, like a sea going over stones.
"You meant to take a man's life with a lie," Elroy said. "You meant to turn friends into enemies."
"Yes," Hugh said. "I meant — I —"
"Why?" The judge's voice was simple. "To keep the net that forms your rule."
Hugh's hands shook harder. "I feared rebellion," he cried. "I feared that if Reid married the princess, he would not serve me. He would raise a new power."
"And what do you now fear?" Isabel asked. "Will you take the throne and then drown it in suspicion?"
The princess's words were small but cutting. Hugh's denial turned into pleading. His face shifted: it started in arrogance, then moved through surprise, then to denial, then to an almost visible collapse into shame.
"I thought I could keep myself small and safe," he said, voice thin. "I thought if I could fix things, the court would be stable."
"Stability bought by lies will rot," the judge said.
Then the punishment began. It was not a private shackling but a public fall: Hugh was stripped of his counsel in front of all the attendants. His robes were taken and paraded by boys who had never dared to touch the emperor's hem. They walked him to the outer platform, where the dead watch for the sun. There, Hugh was stood on a small ice-angle and commanded to speak the truth of his actions.
The crowd watched as he spoke each detail — the payment, the whispering to attendants, the planting of carved evidence. Each confession fell like a comb through his reputation. His supporters turned away like a flock fleeing a snake.
"Reid," Hugh said at one point, panic tearing his voice, "forgive me. I will give you everything. I will wash your robes. I will—"
"Will you undo the dead you called?" Isabel pressed.
Hugh's denial broke into a frail, human plea. "I did what I feared I must."
The crowd reacted: some spat; some took out little stone tablets and carved the confession; some cried out with glee. A courier in the back recorded the words and sent them outward like a wind.
"Reid," I said to him while Hugh's collapse continued, "did you want this?"
He looked at Hugh and then at me. "I wanted truth," he said.
Hugh's fall was not merely personal. It was political. Many of his petty allies scurried away, and in their leaving they pulled away the threads of contracts made under his name. His advisers were stripped of duty in the hour. The public recorded his humiliation by carving each word into the stones of the court. Even the moon seemed to blink with a colder light.
Hugh tried to bargain at the end. He begged for pity, attempted to place the blame elsewhere. "They told me," he said. "The net is too tight and—"
"Enough," the judge said. "You will be exiled from the halls for a period measured by the law. You will watch the river for three cycles and keep your hands unsoiled."
Hugh's fall finished with a sound like a tree being cut: he went still. The court took a breath as if a storm had passed.
"You are ruined," Reid said quietly when the ritual dust had settled.
"I am a man with nothing left," Hugh replied, voice small. "I ask only to survive."
"Then survive without weaving lies," Isabel said.
Hugh's collapse had the effect the underworld rarely saw: it was a cleansing. People spoke his name in new tones, like someone finally getting used to a foreign instrument. The attendants who'd taken the money were dismissed, sent to pick stones by the water. Others who had been his props fled like shadow-smoke. Hugh's face, once a carved seal in the court, was now a wet thing marked by confession.
When the ritual ended, Reid turned and met my eyes.
"You did this," he said.
"And you," I answered.
We stood in that court, in the hush following a storm. Around us, people murmured like leaves. I thought of the man in white and the gold circlet in my dream. I thought of the way the underlord's net had been undone. I thought of Reid — steady, unyielding, with a slow kind of mercy I had never expected.
"Will you come with me to find Doyle?" I asked.
He studied Hugh as a man looks at a broken clock. "I will," he said. "But not because you asked."
"Then because you chose," I whispered.
We left the court together: the Mirror Lord, the bird who once sang like dawn, the gentle servant Elroy, and Princess Isabel, who would make new rules now that old ones cracked. The underlord remained, a man shorn of his little triumphs.
That night, in the hush after the storm and the confessions, Reid lingered at my pillow and said, almost as if telling a friend a secret, "You should know — the dream you had of the man with the circlet is not an accident. He is Doyle Kuznetsov. He carries a sickness and a love, and he keeps the world's edges."
"Then tomorrow," I said, "we go find him."
"Tomorrow," Reid agreed.
I slept that night with a small peace, because even birds can learn to nest where there is room to breathe.
The End
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